Monday 6 August 2007

Europe watches which way the wind blows

Australian Financial Review
Saturday 4/8/2007 Page: 32

Back in the 1880s George Westinghouse argued that alternating current (AC) lost less power over short distances and thus became the industry standard. Today there is serious argument for building long distance high-voltage direct current (DC) lines as DC has lower losses than AC over distance. A DC grid could cover all of Europe, and ultimately the world, making it possible for the vagaries of wind energy to become part of the base-load and reduce the consumption of fossil fuels for electricity generation.

Such a system is already being built between Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Germany for Norway to sell some of its abundant hydro-electricity to the more heavily populated parts of Europe. Ireland's Airtricity has similar plans to transport its North Sea wind energy to customers throughout northern Europe. Perhaps the Organisation of Electricity Exporting Countries will one day take over from OPEC.

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